Tuesday, November 07, 2006

ELECTION DAY 2006 - WHOSE SIDE IS YOUR FAVORITE SUPERHERO ON?

It's mid-term election day here in the States, which means that tommorrow 1/3 of the country will be cautiously happy, 1/3 will be pissed off, and the other 1/3 will have no idea that there was an election in the first place.

It's times like these that make me wonder how superheroes would vote. Is Captain America a Republican or a Democrat? What about Batman? It's tempting to attribute one's own political beliefs to one's childhood heroes, but that would be wrong. We're in a No-Spin Zone here at Dave's Long Box, so I have examined the evidence and decided on a political party affiliation for some of my favorite heroes without regard to my personal beliefs.

So, in an effort to piss off readers of all political persuasions, here then is the breakdown. I can't wait for the Green Lantern fans to start flaming me in the comments section...

SUPERMAN – MODERATE REPUBLICAN

Small town values and big city pragmatism inform Superman’s middle-of-the-road political beliefs. On the one hand, his upbringing in rural Kansas forms the bedrock of Superman’s values system. On the other hand, as Clark Kent, Superman works in bustling cosmopolitan Metropolis for a big city liberal newspaper, The Daily Planet. Superman is a fiscal conservative who has a healthy distrust of big government – don't forget his arch-enemy Lex Luthor was President of the United States for a while. He’s moderate on most social issues like gay rights (Jimmy Olsen is his best pal) but is pro-capital punishment. Hey, Superman, it doesn’t matter if you cry after executing some Kryptonian criminals – you’re still pro-death penalty.

WONDER WOMAN – SOCIALIST

Wonder Woman was raised in an all-female society, a monarchist utopia with strong socialist overtones and plenty of hot girl-on-girl action. Wonder Woman came to “Patriarch’s World” with a clear liberal agenda but a willingness to crack skulls if need be. She’s heavily into social justice, environmental issues, and sisterhood. Wonder Woman is not beyond sticking a high-heeled red boot up your ass if you get in the way of her Sapphic Socialism.

GREEN ARROW – TOTAL FUCKING COMMUNIST

Green Arrow is a loose cannon, politically speaking. He’s somewhere to the left of Alec Baldwin on the political spectrum and he’s armed to the teeth with those crazy-ass arrows of his. Green Arrow is an unapologetic leftist. He's always bitching about how the Justice League are a bunch of fascists and railing against “The Man.” He’s soft on drugs – his sidekick Speedy was a frickin’ junkie! An advocate of redistribution of wealth and his own pinko version of justice, this modern day Robin Hood wants to take your hard-earned money and give it to some soup kitchen or something. Go smoke another joint, hippy!

GREEN LANTERN – REPUBLICAN

The squarest superhero in the DC Universe (and that’s saying a lot), Green Lantern is also one of the most conservative. A former test pilot and current galactic police officer, Green Lantern has always been a running dog for The Man. Dude carries a WMD on his ring finger and flies around reshaping reality according to his idea of The Way Things Should Be. Total neocon. (I am so getting hate email for this.)

BATMAN – INDEPENDENT

Batman is a true independent, a man of solid principles and baffling contradictions. This may be because he is mentally ill. Batman has an almost paranoid distrust of government institutions, yet believes in the rule of law. He’s an urban vigilante, yet he’s a proponent of gun control. Batman is anti-death penalty to a fault – how many times has he had to capture the mass-murdering Joker and return him to Arkham Asylum instead of the electric chair? Contradictions be damned. Batman follows his own moral compass, and Batman is always right. When Batman votes, he weighs all the options and chooses the best person for the job, regardless of party affiliation or whether they are actually running for office. In other words, he writes-in BATMAN on every ballot.

SPIDER-MAN – DEMOCRAT

“With great power comes great responsibility.” That’s 100% Democrat. Spidey is as much about taking care of the little guy as he is about clobbering bad guys. Spidey grew up poor, watching his Aunt May trying to stretch her Social Security check each month and scrambling to make ends meet as a freelance photographer for that yellow rag The Daily Bugle. Nowadays he’s working as a teacher in a New York public school. Recently Spidey was duped by reactionary neocon superheroes into supporting their oppressive agenda in Marvel’s Civil War mini-series. Total democrat.

No Marvel hero has better Republican credentials than Tony Stark, aka Iron Man. He’s a billionaire industrialist and weapons manufacturer with an Ivy League education and a drinking problem. He’s a staunch anti-communist and served as Secretary of Defense (can we have him back?). In Marvel’s Civil War storyline, Iron Man has drawn a line in the proverbial sand. He wants all superhumans to register with the government, and if you’re not with him, you’re against him. And if you’re against him, look out. He’ll classify you as an enemy combatant and throw your ass into his Negative Zone prison, where U.S. courts have no jurisdiction. No, he’s not considered a supervillain, why do you ask?

THE HULK – LIBERTARIAN

“Hulk just want to be left alone.”

CAPTAIN AMERICA - TRUMAN DEMOCRAT

Cap is a man out of time. Thawed after 50-odd years of suspended animation, this living legend from World War II is guided by old-fashioned American values and unshakeable principles. In other words, he’s got a bit of a stick up his ass. Captain America can’t even recognize today’s political parties, which have mutated in the decades he’s been on ice into bloated, hypocritical ideological monstrosities whose divisive policies makes him sad. Makes him cry, even. Cap believes in small government that stays out of private lives, a strong national defense, and pulling oneself up by one’s boot straps or shoelaces or whatever is handy. However, Cap is opposed to legislating morality and believes that government has a responsibility to help out the less fortunate and defenseless, like kids and puppies. Cap is a walking Frank Capra movie with a mean right hook. He votes his conscience, not along party lines.

GHOST RIDER - UNAFILLIATED

The Spirit of Vengeance, Ghost Rider is the ultimate protest voter. He always votes against the incumbent and anyone who endorses helmet laws. Vengeance is his.

231 comments:

So Marvel has a token Republican and DC has a token Democrat? Never realized the political leanings of the Big Two Comic Beheamoths until now. Thank you, Dave, for the enlightenment. I'm voting Marvel!

And I wish I had seen this post this morning. Being confronted with a choice for the current asshole from one party for Senator or the BIGGER asshole from the other party, if I had seen this post beforehand, I would have written in "Batman." As it stands, I voted for the Party for the Poor candidate, because poor people never get enough parties.

This totally fucking rocked. The only thing I would disagree on is Superman, he's definitely against capital punishment in spite of having executed Zod. Poor guy... these are some of the superhuman decisions he has to make, just like the whole Man of Steel/Woman of Kleenex thing.

I was going to ask how the Punisher would vote, then I realized: with a bullet.

John Hood, the president of the John Locke Foundation, a Raleigh (N.C.) based conservative think tank, wrote a darn good column about this a few years back.

In addition to being a thoughtful political observer, Hood obvioulsy is a big comics fan. Here is his column:

The Implicit (and Welcome) Politics of Superhero Comic Books

Carolina JournalSeptember 2001

As a pop-culture phenomenon, the comic-book superhero is back in an upswing. Yes, I know that such things — westerns, girl groups, spy thrillers, etc. — come and go. Their fate is hardly linked to that of civilization itself (except for disco, the persistence of which might well have signified the End of Days).

Still, I can’t help but look forward eagerly to the latest comics fad, which is being driven largely by film. Last year’s moderately successful X-Men convinced Marvel Comics that motion pictures offered the key to its rejuvenation in the coming decade, much as the X-Men and Spider-Man television programs rebuilt the company in the early 1990s. So, not surprisingly, it is following up with a major studio release of Spider-Man this fall, to be followed over the next two years by another X-Men installment and movies based on the Incredible Hulk, Daredevil, the Fantastic Four, and Iron Man.

Over at DC Comics, where the Batman movie franchise quickly (arguably by the middle of the first film in 1989) degenerated into idiocy, executives are reportedly putting together a more serious Batman film and trying to rekindle interest in its Superman series, which also got really silly really fast.

Why care about superhero comics? Because, with few exceptions, they are an unabashedly right-of-center cultural force. Many superhero characters and story lines advance principles of justice, individual rights, and skepticism about government power that should warm the heart. Here is a rough classification of the implicit politics of the genre based around its major characters and creative periods.

The Golden Age

Traditionally classified as beginning with the publication of the first Superman comic in 1938 and ending in the late 1940s or early 1950s, the Golden Age of superheroes introduced many of the characters with which the general public is most familiar, such as Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and Captain America. This was a time of war, both hot with the Axis powers and cold with the Soviet Empire, so the stories tended to be simple and patriotic.

Even so, you can clearly observe some differences among individual characters. For example:

• Batman is a paleo-conservative. He has a dark, somewhat pessimistic view of human nature. He literally fights crime in the dark, and has no super powers other than his intelligence, which suggests a limited view of man’s malleability. He works closely with the Gotham police, at least at first, and tends to spend his time protecting private property against robbers and thieves.

Furthermore, in civilian life Bruce Wayne is a man of inherited wealth, a globe-trotting education, and impeccable taste who runs a major corporate conglomerate — and indeed, in later stories, is revealed to be a defense contractor. In his spare time, Batman probably reads Forbes, National Review, and Russell Kirk.

• Superman, on the other hand, is a liberal, albeit of the 1930s variety. A newspaper reporter (I could rest my case there), his alter ego Clark Kent is constantly investigating the business titans of Metropolis and second-guessing the clueless police department. His nemesis is ultimately revealed to be the evil Lex Luthor, like Wayne an industrialist and defense contractor.

Another clue to Superman’s implicit politics is that he is just too darn powerful. The character began life as a strong, fast young man who could “leap tall buildings with a single bound.” Before long, however, he was flying around (inexplicably), burning things with his eyes, freezing things with his breath, and getting pretty close to invulnerable. It seems that Superman’s powers, like those of the federal government during FDR’s New Deal, just wouldn’t be kept within rational bounds. Kryptonite, a creation of the Superman radio show rather than the comic book, was a kind of a cheat; it gave him an apparent vulnerability, but it was really about as challenging as Wendell Willkie.

Like another liberal character of the time, the Green Lantern, Superman began to meddle in the interplanetary politics of his day without ever being elected by anyone he purported to represent. Still, Clark Kent, particularly in his earlier days as Superboy in Smallville, Kansas (to be dramatized this fall in anew television series on the WB), reflects traditional small-town American values. He’s a busybody, but you know his heart is in the right place. He’s Arthur Schlesinger, not Tom Hayden.

Other Golden Age characters offered contrasting political archtypes. Wonder Woman was a feminist who likes to tie people up with a magic lasso that made them tell the truth (she was the creation of William Marston, who in real life was the inventor of the lie detector and a man of somewhat strange personal proclivities). Hawkman was an enigmatic monarchist, a reincarnation of an ancient Egyptian lord. Captain Marvel was a freedom-loving character who rivaled Superman in sales during much of the 1940s — until DC filed a mostly bogus claim of copyright infringement and eliminated Superman’s major competition through government intervention.

See, the Kryptonian was a liberal.

The Silver Age

Beginning in the late 1950s DC and Marvel were reinvented with new characters and new takes on old characters that provided story lines with more depth and creativity. This so-called Silver Age lasted until the 1970s.

The most interesting Silver Age characters came from Marvel, which under a previous name had published second-tier comics featuring Captain America, the Human Torch, the Sub-Mariner, and other characters in the 1940s and early 1950s. The company’s first coup was the Fantastic Four, who gained their powers from cosmic radiation. They represent the old idea of the four elements: fire (the new Human Torch), water (the stretchable Mr. Fantastic), air (the Invisible Girl), and earth (the rock-like Thing). They were the first superhero team to have to deal with real life: earning a living, paying the rent, coping with fame, and avoiding eviction for constantly tearing up their offices in Manhattan’s Baxter Building in battles with intergalactic invaders. As they were mugged by reality in a variety of ways, it is safe to say they were at least unconscious conservatives, albeit of a family-values variety.

Their sometime allies, the Avengers, were conservatives, too. For one thing, they included super-patriot Captain America, profit-seeking scientist Henry Pym (Ant-Man and Giant-Man), industrialist Tony Stark (Iron Man) and the Mighty Thor, a god who smashed bad guys with a hammer (’nuff said). The Avengersactually lived in an apartment and headquarters provided by Stark — who was yet another defense contractor, by the way — and ran afoul of various federal (and thus unconstitutional) law enforcement agencies over the years.

Other Marvel characters of the ’60s can be properly called libertarians. Spider-Man and the mysterious Dr. Strange, in particular, operate well outside traditional governmental authority, with the former treated as at least a bungler if not worse by the powers-that-be. “With great power comes great responsibility” is the oft-repeated lesson that Peter Parker learns on receiving his powers (from the bite of a radioactive spider) and then refusing to use them to stop a criminal who later murders his beloved uncle. Not surprisingly, these characters were co-created by artist Steve Ditko, an Ayn Rand devotee who later went on to create more explicit libertarian characters such as The Question and Mr. A.

Daredevil, one of the first disabled superheroes (he is blind but employs a kind of radar sense), is such a committed civil libertarian that he captures bad guys by night and then defends them in court by day as attorney Matt Murdoch.

The popular X-Men, which began in the Silver Age but really arrived in their current form in 1975, exhibited a number of libertarian traits. They are powerful mutants, the harbingers of a new kind of man referred to as “homo superior,” and yet they are trained by their mentor Charles Xavier to control themselves and to respect the rights of others — even those out to enslave them. The X-Men are at war both with a tyrannical government and with the fascist Magneto, whose seeks mutant domination of the Earth. A key theme of the X-Men saga is the need to restrain power; Professor X, meet James Madison.

Eco-Terrorist Heroes Fall Short

From the Silver Age onward, attempts to create superhero characters and stories with a liberal bent never seemed to pan out. Underwater characters Aquaman (DC) and the Sub-Mariner (Marvel) were often cast as radical environmentalists, but this limited rather than boosted their appeal. Namor the Sub-Mariner often played more the villain than the hero, in fact, as more law-abiding superheroes reined in his eco-terrorism.

In the early 1970s, a book teaming up Green Lantern and Green Arrow (another rich Batman-like character) tried to do “relevant” material on poverty and race relations, but the series didn’t sell. About the same time, Wonder Woman shed her Amazon accoutrements, became a flower child, and just about faded from sight (television brought her back with statuesque Lynda Carter and 1940s-era stories).

The 1980s brought a grimy and gritty take on the genre, starting with the pathbreaking Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and including The Watchmen, an dark update of the old Charlton Comics action heroes of the 1960s that take its name from Juvenal’s ancient question: “Who watches the watchmen?” Then comics took another popular turn in the 1990s as animated series introduced Batman, Spider-Man, and the X-Men to millions of new fans. One landmark ’90s series, Kurt Busiek’s Astro City, turned The Watchmen on its head. The latter asked what it would be like if superheroes actually lived in our world. Astro City asked what it would be like to live in theirs.

I don’t know how long the latest upswing of superhero comics will last, but I hope it will be a while. As long as the new movies feature lots of action, computer-generated-effects, and a complete lack of liberal sentimentality, they’ll do well. Remember: once the movie Superman stopped fighting supervillains and become an environmental wacko and nuclear-freeze peacenik, it was all over.

Kyle Rayner is that guy who donated, like, $20 to Howard Dean in 2004 and has Moveon.org in his bookmarks but forgot to actually vote.

God, I hate that guy.

In all seriousness... Dave, this was brilliant, and kind of a return to form. I don't want to say the blog hasn't been good lately, because it has, but this post really captured the kind of side-splitting, "cough up your milk every other line" style of humor that characterizes your best posts.

I know that Frank Miller's take on Superman as stooge of the Military Industrial Establishment was pretty powerful, but until the Eisenhower 50's, Superman was a full-on radical crusader, like Joe Hill with a strong right arm and the desirfe to dish out some serious ass-kicking.

First of all, his adoptive parents are Midwest independent farmers. Grange types -- hald socialist to start. In his very first appearance, Superman:

1) Stops an execution;2) Beats the crap out of a "wife-beater";3) Has a bad date with proto-feminist Lois Lane (who when they later marry, keeps her own name)4) Terrifies a lobbyist who is trying to get the US involved in WW2 (OK, that part is a bit confusing);5) Later, he terrifies a munitions manufacturer who was fuding the lobbyist.

As a whole, I've also thought that most superheroes were primarily left leaning based on the ideals most have espoused over the years. But as time has moved on, we've been shown that there's a division within their ranks. Such as the Hard Travelin' Heroes of the 70's and the Marvel heroes of today.

As far as Superman goes, I think the case could be made for both sides. Sure, he's against the death penalty but he's also 'executed' others. At the most that just makes him a hypocrite. Especially, after the events of the Sacrifice arc.

First. Green Arrow is a tad nuts given that as a leftist he still beat up Speedy for drug taking.

Second. Your 'Batman as independent' assertion really just highlights how screwed up the writing on the character is nowadays. However he would vote or stand back when the writing was better doesn't mean anything now that he... is a law-abiding vigilante.

Third. You obviously don't read my blog otherwise you would know that "white Liberal guilt" is a corruption of "With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility" which is a Conservative principle. http://apologiesdemanded.blogspot.com/2005/02/next-conservative-idol.html

Seriously. "With great power--" means you do it yourself and handle yourself if you can as you can. The big government model is the opposite of that. The Democratic Party model is the "take away power from the people" notion coupled with the "nanny-state superfantasy". Seriously. The Big Government idea isn't just that the government has power and will use it but that your powers and responsibilities will be taken away. Screw that!

Daredevil as a far-left liberal? I don't think so, especially considering what a big deal Frank Miller's run is, establishing Murdock is a hypocritical vigilante Catholic who also supports the justice system by day....

Speaking as someone who is geographically 3000 miles to the right of everyone in the US, but politically a commensurate distance to the left, I've never understood why you people don't scrap your 'richest guy wins' philosophy and let the West Wing scriptwriters run the country....

How do we think Magneto leans? With his "you're either with us or against us" attitude and preference for aggression over negotiation he might fit in well at the current Republican White House. Say... does anyone know if Karl Rove can manipulate metal and hover in mid-air?

Speaking of Captain America and the question of his politics, I will shamelessly plug a post I wrote earlier this week, on the GREATEST POLITICAL CAPTAIN AMERICA STORY EVER TOLD: What If? #44. And the comments thread features an appearance by Peter B. Gillis! Here 'tis: http://prettyfakes.com/?p=862

Great post.I'd agree 100%, except that I find the same thing missing in your post that I find missing in most political tests: a delineation between personal politics and civil politics.I personally believe in feeding the poor, helping immigrants, etc. All "liberal" issues.However, I also believe those are my responsibilities, not the governments. A "conservative" stance.I think that delineation might have helped understand some characters like Superman. Of course, Superman is so messianic that everyone wants to claim him for their camp.

Assuming he's become a US citizen, (which I actually don't think he ever has) I think he would either (A) be part of the majority who stayed home and mocked voting as pointless, or (B) voted the closest he could get to anarchist, i.e. libertarian.

Until recent events, he was entrenched in corporate culture and an avowed consumer (Connor loves him some shoes, gadgets, and hovercraft). But he's also mistrustful of authority -- a position he's come by the hard way. He's moderately concerned about global warming (culprit: super-villains), but otherwise he has little to say on social issues, except for bipartisan concerns such as health care.

However, he dropped out of sight for a four-month road trip, during which he could have experienced a change in perspective. But even assuming he hasn't been done in by Paleowolf or somebody since then, Connor strikes me as the type who forgets to vote anyway.

No Superhero can be a Green Party member. It wouldn't make sense since they push back. Green Party looses again.

Still, this is pretty great stuff. It makes me wonder though, what about those other superheros. Like Deadpool? Oh wait, no he's a merc. Merc's don't vote, plus he's trying to advoid insanity by pretending to be insane or he is insane already.

Pretty sweet. But what about the Vertigo heroes? Many of them would be liberal Democrats. But I could see Preacher being a Republican, albeit an schizophrenic one. But Morpheus? Death? John Constantine?

You can't really compare the Superman in 1938 to the post-Crisis character now or even the character that was around in the mid-50s. He's totally changed. Although I suppose you could make the case he went from somebody who was pissed with the establishment in the 30s, went off and fought in the war in the 40s and settled down to suburban cosiness in the 50s like many young men did back then.

I'd agree with the death penalty thing. Clark in Smallville deep-sixes just about every meteor freak\Zoner he doesn't get packed off to the loony bin.

Batman dresses as a bat, the anomalous mammal with wings, is a billionaire who mostly fights street crime and is a non-powered guy in a very super-powered world and is best friends with an alien hick from the Midwest. Thus I predict he'd be a conservative Democrat.

OLLIE: (To junkie) If you weren't so pale and washed-out looking, I'd do a dance on your head!

HAL: Steady, Arrow! You don't have to be so rough on the lads!

OLLIE: Oh buzz off, Lantern! Look... sure, I'm ticked off at the pushers because they prey on weaknesses-- but my heart bleeds for junkies! Life is tough for everyone! If you want to claim humanity, you don't crawl into a drugged stupor!

Also, dude, with respect... your assessment of Hal sounds like you haven't read a GL comic since the 1970's. Hal's had a little thing called character development over the past 30+ years.

Woah, just because he's Canadian, that doesn't mean Logan can't have a party affiliation! He could support the Conservaive Party, the Liberal Party, the New Democratic Party, the First People's National Party, the Marijuana Party, or god forbid, the Bloc Quebecois!It's like an electoral buffet.

I see Wolverine doing a lot of stumping for states that have adamantium-lacing referendums on the ballot. He's the Michael J. Fox of mutants!

"I have an accelerated healing factor, but thousands of children can't reconstitute their bodies after an atomic blast. Adamantium lacing is dangerous and deadly, and it can happen to your son or daughter. I'm the best there is at what I do, but one thing I don't do is vote for Prop 17!"

why all the anomosity against liberalism? It wasn't conservatives who championed civil rights for minorities. It wasn't conservatives who championed women's sufferage. Conservatives didn't fight for a 40 hour work week, child labor laws or workman's comp. No, conservatives fought against those things because they were, um, conservative. But yeah its easy (and trendy) to be conservative now that liberals have set this country straight.

I have to agree with what you've posted, and I'm damn proud of Batman. (I should've written him in, but I wrote Elroy Jetson instead...) Speaking of children, i'm left to wonder how Archie and the gang have grown into voters... I shall ponder this over my morning toast. Thanks for the thought topic, and I greatly enjoy your blog.

Okay, anyone who doesn't think Hal's a Republican at the moment needs to go back and reread the latest Green Lantern/Green Arrow team-up in GL, Vol 4. I believe this was in issue 7. Hal clearly states that he approves of the Guardians keeping him under constant surveillance, and when Ollie objects Hal says something about how only people who are doing soemthing wrong should be bothered.

He's not only a registered Republican, he's still voting for Republicans.

1) Jefferson Pierce, aka Black Lightning, is a member of the Tomorrow Party.

2) "why all the anomosity against liberalism? It wasn't conservatives who championed civil rights for minorities. It wasn't conservatives who championed women's sufferage. Conservatives didn't fight for a 40 hour work week, child labor laws or workman's comp. No, conservatives fought against those things because they were, um, conservative."

It wasn't Democrats who championed the blacks in those dark times yet they insist they insist that they are the champions of all minorities today (it is irrelevent that the Republicans of the day did more for minorites than Democrats did). The American Civil Liberties Union actually crusaded to make it an American custom for equality between people regardless of skin color; which now is now a contrary to the ACLU's policy of suing to get people to shut up. It's especially a different flavor: way back then the ACLU helped fight for a world where differences exist but don't matter. Now we see them launch lawsuits to redefine what a minority is and what roles do sex play in minority politics.

2B) Confusing the Liberalism movement where things change as opposed to the status quo to the Big Government folk of today is a trap that few thinking folk fall into. Most thinking people who fall into the trap I will excuse because they are normally preoccupied in their daily lives. People who press the point will find the point pressed back.

2C) Conservativism does not figure race into the philosophy. At all. Racists who happen to be Conservatives are indicative of the Conservatives who aren't involved in the conflict or argument. Regardless of all that, making a positive goal of racial equality and suffrage and working for it has nothing to do with Conservativism and opposing it has more to do with stubbornnes than philosophy.

2D) if you want to make an argument of it I will say that the Conservative point of view on the issue is as following and it is absolutely correct: having the federal government officially declare this equal rights crap is the dumbest and most invasive, judgemental, heavy-handed thing we could have put into place on the issue. The solution isn't to ask the government to make a value decision. Racism happened because people were jerks. People were deprived of voting rights because people were jerks. You can't stop someone from being jerks but a successful movement by man isn't to urge a declaration from on high, but to get people to admit they were wrong, and hey!... at least get the right-thinking people's morality to override the jerk's presence.

But hey, it's results that count. Too bad now instead of race isn't just a matter of changing hearts. Now it's a major political issue, political currency, and every two to six years we have left-wing dirtbags convincing folk that conservatives will "roll-back their rights" and other such rhetoric implying a reversal of the civil rights era.

2E) So I disparage the modern Liberalism because for all my studies it seems to have less of a ruling philosophy and more of an attempt to be contrarian on dozens of issues, with an added wiff of... homogenisation. Are we talking liberty or equality? That's an essay.

2F) "But yeah its easy (and trendy) to be conservative now that liberals have set this country straight."

Conservativism is, among other fun things, finding the point in history on a given subject where things were right and fell into place as right. Then we should keep things that way. Black people can vote? Women can vote? Good deal! Let's keep it that way. Black people of 1999 getting paid by white people of 1999 for sins cast upon 19th century black people from 19th century white people? That's a bad approach. That is an idea put forward by liberals.

But all of that race stuff is irrelevent until it is introduced into the argument, usually by liberals. Then it's usually just to raise select portions of society as defenseless and then just so various political entities can take credit as the champions for those people, as if they would be defiled and helpless without that protection.

I suppose there are two things to despise about "Liberalism" like that. There is the insistence that certain people would be victimized by me and mine if not for the Democrats and their government policy to protect those people. Who is supposed to be insulted by that? Me, for being called a devil or the "minorities" for called helpless or stupid?The other thing to despise is that the nasty lesson of the last sixty years from the Left is that people are entitled to a certain set of things, regardless of reality, and that if push comes to shove it is up to the Big G Government to make things right. That's called the entitlement society. It's dehumanizing; rather than taking maximum responsibility and scrapping (metaphorically speaking) for what we want (but don't need) we are now told that if we don't have it we should be given it by those who do :have it". Which leads me to people who don't "have it" but are told that they should "have it" and that they "are incapable of having it" because "those guys are stopping you from having it. yeah those guys. over there." Then told that the Big Daddy G Government will make things right.

Which really has nothing to do with black people in reality and I could care less about race politics... but the entitlement crap is entitlement crap and I'll bloody well have the animosity...

The Thing: Yellow dog Democrat. (dude is a jew from the hood of NYC. He wouldn't vote Republican if you PAID him.)

Optimus Prime: Kennedy-style Democrat. Popular, man-of-the-people type despite massive inheritance (the Matrix). Willing to spend ridiculous amounts of money (or Energon) on scientific initiatives with military undertones , policy of deterrence against Megatron. Social liberal ("Freedom is the right of all sentient beings"), pro-gun control (always smashes Megatron's deadly new superweapon instead of USING IT AGAINST HIM). Definitely a bleeding heart when it comes to those weaker than he is.

The Punisher: Radical Republican. So far left that he's gone round the bend. His entire campaign is TOUGH ON CRIME TOUGH ON CRIME TOUGH ON CRIME. Probably uses Rand to justify his actions. If he had a real-world counterpart, it'd be the Ultimate Warrior. But with guns.

Check out the real history of rise of fascism in Italy in the 1930s. It was started by a group of very rich people, who felt themselves victims, and felt govt was corrupt, and law & order was not working.

These people would have loved Batman. this comic book character is a sanitized version of their early dreams.

It's the dream of never in your life having to work, but nevertheless feel yourself the victim. Plus you get to beat up poorer people when you you feel like it. All for 'Law & Order'.

Maybe Batman is for gun control, but he gets to keep his weapons, right? Think about it. In his plan, he is the only one armed. ..the 20th century fascists had the same gun control ideas.

btw, I blogged about this years ago. Batman fans won't like it, though.

"My will is absolute! See what I have made! Imagine what is yet to come! I take away their confusion and give them obedience. I take away their fear of themselves and give them fear of Darkseid. I have liberated them from the chaos of indecision! I have given them one straight path! One clear purpose! One goal: to die for Darkseid!"

I agree with you also, Dave. I'd add only that based on his actions in DARK KNIGHT RETURNS and KINGDOM COME, Batman is an independent who'd probably vote Democratic most of the time. He's a billionaire industrialist in the Bill Gates mold.

Too bad all the liberal superheros who believe in "helping the little" guy don't realize that the government is not a charity.

There is nothing in the constitution that says the government has to bail your ass out when you fail at life. And why take tax dollars away from hard working citizens just so some bum can spend his welfare check on booze. And historically, social services have only lead to beurocracy, and a dependence on the state. All social programs are just protocommunist movements (read the Communist manifesto). They do more harm than good.

Not that I don't believe in charity, just not at the expense of the taxpayer.

And it's not just neocons who want to reshape anything. After all, the ACLU will crash down on anybody who doesn't follow their politically correct ideals.

As for not legislating morality There are two kinds of legislation: priority and moral. Priority legislation represents choices between right and right: Do we build the road here or there? Should this money go to parks or roads? Moral legislation, however, represents choices between right and wrong: What happens when a man brandishes a gun in public? What happens when a mother terminates the life of her unborn child? What happens when a father injures his child?

In this sense, not only can we legislate morality, we must. Moral laws establish the boundaries of our civilization. Unless we legislated morality, the barbarians would overpower decent people. Our public servants are put in office to, among other things, restrain evil. We cannot legislate the heart, but we are responsible restrain it for the common good.

And Cap doesn't have a stick up his ass, he just believes in the old-fashioned values that made America great.

And whoever said Optimus Prime was a liberal is wrong. Who gave Spike Witckey a gun on many occasions, he only spends Energon en mass during war, and only meddles in interplanetary affairs when the Decepicon (terrorist) threat is a concern. He helps those weaker than him because he knows it's thee right thing to do, not because of ideological guilt. And it's not just liberals who believe in freedom. The founding fathers were "conservative" in the modern sense of the word.

Pretty sweet. But what about the Vertigo heroes? Many of them would be liberal Democrats. But I could see Preacher being a Republican, albeit an schizophrenic one. But Morpheus? Death? John Constantine?

Morpheus is the King of Dreams. Which political party is he? All of them.

Death and the other Endless are pretty much outside politics given that they're personifications of abstract concepts.

Contsantine is an urban working-class guy who loathes Margaret Thatcher and John Major. I'd wager he votes Labour if he votes at all. He's definitely not a Tory.

Solario said...

But you're right on the money with Daredevil. Except he can't vote anymore can he? Convicted fellon and all.

Since he lives in New York State, he'd be able to get his voting rights restored after he finished his probabtion. His legal career would be a bigger problem - a felony conviction would him disbarred as a lawyer.

Logan/Wolverine - bi-polar libertarian. I don't care what you do, just leave me out of it. That said, if you are stupid enough to cross the line on MY space I'm going to rip your throat out.

Magneto - independent. But would quickly replace the government with an Oligarchy of his puppets.

Cyclops - Liberal. Too focused on fairness and equality to enforce the letter of the law or let competition rule.

Storm - Liberal. Runs on a campaign of "for the sake of the children" and "in the name of the environment".

Archangel - independent. Rebels against his Republican father but isn't willing to embrace full blow liberalism.

Beast - Moderate Republican. Believes science, understanding and diplomacy is the key to peace, but is willing to enforce strong security even if sacrificing personal freedoms. Has a strong morale code beyond situational experiences.

Rogue – Independent. absorbs powers from too many outside sources to have a fixed identity for herself.

Iceman - Republican. Too cold hearted to have the warm fuzzy feelings of the Democrats.

Jean Grey - Moderate Democrat. Too caring and nurturing. But willing to take a strong stand on the rule of law and security.

Nightcrawler - Socialist. His appearance and past leave him misunderstood as evil when in his pure form he is good. Seeks equality and fairness, but often results in endangering the stability of others. He's been a bit brainwashed by strong belief in religion is often misuses it to accomplish his goals.

Punisher - Anarchist. Live right and I'll leave you alone. Screw with me or my family and I'm taking justice into my own hands.

First off Dave, great post. Although I'd argue that Superman is very anti-death penalty. That story when he kills the Phantom Zone villains was complete and total bullshit and yet another reason why John Byrne should never be allowed anywhere near the character again. Second, I wouldn't call Iron Man a neocon -- if anything, Tony's always been staunchly libertarian. He's basically a living embodiment of objectivism. Civil War has been very erroneous in many characterizations, but none moreso than Tony.

Now then, on to some of the other comments. A lot of people are confusing labels and lumping Democrats as liberals and Republicans as conservatives. Chris said that it was Republicans who did more for blacks and this is true -- but those ideals are liberal ideals, not conservative ones. Anyone who goes around defining liberals and conservatives as Democrats and Republicans respectively is, simply put, full of shit. I'd argue that there hasn't been a liberal Democrat since Bobby Kennedy. And as for Republicans, pretty much the only Republican who could be called a true conservative is John McCain. The neocons are borderline fascists.

Not all liberals believe in affirmative action, repairations for slavery, or extreme political correctness. No, liberals believe in individual freedoms and government protection of those liberties. To say that all liberals want repairations or government hand-outs is as ridiculous as saying all conservatives believe in George W. Bush's deficit spending (which is very anti-conservative).

"and as for Republicans, pretty much the only Republican who could be called a true conservative is John McCain."

See, now that's craptacular. John McCain is the pushbutton when I rally Conservatives to do something against someone. If John McCain takes someone's side we typically treat that someone as a political enemy.

McCain is NOT a Conservative. Conservativism, Conservatism, whatever, is a political philosophy.

However, John McCain rarely, almost never bases his political actions on a philosophy, instead putting his finger to the wind.

No actual Conservative would have formed the McCain Feingold campaign finance reform bill, which essentially tells people that I can't give my shit to whomever or whatever I want.

As for whether Neoconservatives are borderline fascists... they aren't the ones taking away houses from private citizens in return for a measily pittance.

Yes, if someone is a "McCain-lover" he is typically the Republican we team up to smash in a Primary election or a Party chair position, I promise you.

personally, I see Superman as a Truman democrat. Most powerful individual in the world, tied himselves down in multiples groups, always going to the UN and various international groups even though those organization continue to allow tyranny and injustice to continue (Black Adam series in Justice Society). Worried about the bigger international picture.

BTW, ref morgan comment:last time I checked pretty much any political party is against the beating of women. interesting slur though, dumb repubs rednecks beating up on feminist women folk vs weak kneed libs standing by watching squeaking how offended they are? either slur is offensive and shows the speaker needs to go out and meet new friends from both parties.

hey, superman is totally unaffiliated, he wants the best for all life forms, he just wants everyone to live ok lives until their time to turn over theyre leaf. One way you can see it is he's the worlds police, the other way to see it is how else can he use his powers for good? he has powers nigh of god-like, and all he wants to do is keep a normal life while he's kent clark. he isn't pro death, he's antitorturous death, hes pro peace, pro truth justice and liberty, and hes out there making sure everyone is protected, even from themselves. now bash on superman all you want, but the root of it all is hes a confused farm boy with superpowers, and only few ways to use them. hes just trying to make sure everyones ok.

The Question is a hardcore Ayn Rand Libertarian, but less so than the amazingly Randian MrA by Ditko earlier. You can see Ditko's politics in characters he helped create like J Jonah Jameson - the epitome of the leftist crusading journalist who ruins who he doesn't like with lies, distortion, and innuendo.

"And don't forget it was he Democrats who first wrote the Patriot Act. Liberals are more "Big Brother" than Conservatives. it's almost always left wing socialists who want to monitor what you're doing."

Youth is not wow gold a time of life;world of warcraft gold it is a state of mind; cheap wow gold it is not a Maple Story Accounts matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees;mesos it is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination,wow gold kaufen a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness wow geld of the deep springs of life.maple story mesos Youth means a tempera-mental predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of 60 more than a boy of 20.wow gold farmen Nobody grows old merely by a number of years.maple story money We grow old by deserting our ideals.ms mesos Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spring back to dust. Whether 60 or 16, there is in every human being’wow powerleveling s heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing childlike appetite of what’s maple story money next and the joy of the game of living.powerlevel In the center of your heart and my heart there is a wireless station: so long as it receives messages maplestory powerleveling of beauty, hope, cheer,world of warcraft power leveling courage and power from men and from the Infinite

tn chaussuresEnter the necessary language translation, up to 200 bytes winter, moves frequently in China, nike chaussures showing that the deep strategy of the Chinese market. Harvard Business School, nike tnaccording to the relevant survey data show that in recent years the Chinese market three brands, Adidas, mens clothingpolo shirts Li Ning market share at 21 percent, respectively, 20%, 17%. The brand is first-line to three lines of urban competition for mutual penetration. Side of theworld,announced layoffs, while China's large-scale facilities fists. The sporting goods giant Nike's every move in the winter will be fully exposed its strategy. Years later, the Nike, Inc. announced the world's Fan

And if we are talking specifics, here, then make it a waist 33, length 30 to crease nicely over my square tipped Kenneth Cole Reaction vintage nubuck loafers. I also would like a 1.8" wide Gucci horsebit ring buckle belt the same color as the loafers.